Monday, July 06, 2015

Dog Gone Dogma or is Religion a Scapegoat?

So part of the US anti muslim narrative is that the Qu’ran is a book full of hate that preaches jihad, war, intolerance, yada, yada. Another part says that Muslims are just barbaric like Christians were a few hundred years ago and they just need time to mature a bit. Muslim apologist say that radicals are a small part of the muslim world. Statistics say muslim extremist are less than 1% of all muslims.
Pastor Rick Scarborough threaten to go up in flames if Gay marriage was rendered legal in the US.

He later, recanted his statement saying it was a metaphor from an old spiritual. He said, “I made that comment to paraphrase a spiritua
l song, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in which the three were given a choice—to bow to the image of Nebuchadnezzar or burn in a furnace,” said Scarborough.”‘We will burn’ means that we will accept any sanction from the government for resisting [Friday's] Supreme Court decision. We do not support any violence or physical harm.” Maybe some of you see an easy parallel but it is over my head, extremely premature at the very least. I guess he is anticipating a law that makes it illegal for churches against Gay marriage to opt out of performing them.

In a debate between ex British prime minister Tony Blair and atheist and journalist Christopher Hitchens, Hitchens argues, “Religion forces nice people to do unkind things, and also makes intelligent people say stupid things” your thoughts?
Sadly, June 23 retired pastor Charles Moore sets himself on fire in protest of racism. The Tyler Morning Telegraph obtained a copy of the suicide note from Grand Saline police. In it, Moore lamented past racism in Grand Saline and beyond. He called on the community to repent and said he was “giving my body to be burned, with love in my heart” for those who were lynched in his hometown as well as for those who did the lynching, hoping to address lingering racism.
“Giving my body to be burned with love in my heart,” is straight out of the new testament,
1 Corinthians 13 King James Version (KJV) 13.... 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. I doubt pastor Moore can be called a radical, fundamentalist Christian but I know little about him.

I’m more inclined to think that there was unfinished business in his life, sometime when, in his own mind, he should have acted and didn’t and it got to him. He could have been a religious person like he was or an atheist or agnostic and had the same end. Timothy McVeigh was raised Catholic but hadn’t practiced for a long time and at the time of his execution considered himself agnostic.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/texas-pastor-denies-plan-to-set-self-on-fire-if-gay-marriage-was-legalized-was-only-quoting-a-song/

Is Hitchens correct that religion makes good people do bad things? Does the good that comes out of religion, any religion, eclipse or even balance out the wrong doing? We’ve had the Inquisition, witch hunts, sex scandal cover up in the catholic church, the Ku Klux Klan, a religious organization vs., the Salvation Army, Abolitions, ecstatic, spiritual experiences in all religions and pissing matches: My God is the real thing, yours is fake and it says so right in the book. Is religion the culprit or the scapegoat? Less than one percent doesn’t sound too bad does it? If one percent of Islam is radical, fringe, and a potential hotbed of terrorism that is 16 million people. If one percent of Christianity worldwide is radical, fringe, and a potential hotbed of terrorism that is 22.3 million people.

The way it’s painted there is a line in the sand and never the twain shall meet, terrorist on one side and people who frown on terrorism on the other side. However after watching terrorism in the US just since the turn of the 20th century through today it seems to me there are a lot of terrorist sympathizers who systemically support terrorism against People of Color, our LGBT brothers and sisters, filling the gap between terrorists on one side of the line and their antithesis. They have posh jobs in the media. Six churches have been set on fire since Dylan Roof, I think they are terrorist attacks because of the number and the timing to the 9 South Carolina deaths and because they are black churches, but the media is showing an unusual amount of restraint calling this arson,: “The Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch blog reports that as of Friday, "a string of nighttime fires have damaged or destroyed at least six predominately black churches in four southern states in the past week." Investigators have determined at least three of the fires were set by arsonists.”
“ One Tweet Nails The Hypocrisy of Media Coverage as Black Churches Burn Across the South” http://mic.com/articles/121461/one-tweet-nails-the-silence-of-media-as-black-churches-burn-across-the-south

Your Host

Cavana Faithwalker was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Much of his
worldview and values have been molded by his Blackness bestowed upon him in a
working class Black, urban neighborhood. He blames his packrat tendencies, the
economy in his art and poetry on being raised by an Alabama, depression baby
momma who was raised on a farm with her nine brothers and sisters. "She is
probably the reason I fight consumerism gone amuck and the overly me-ish
influence of our society," says Cavana.

His fascination with mechanical things, physics, his aesthetics,
his sense of humor and how things relate to each other comes from construction
worker dad and others.

He has a degree in public art marketing and management from
Cleveland State University. His major is composed of Urban Studies, Studio Art and Marketing.

He says his “new best friend” now is Amit Goswami a quantum
physicist turned spiritual guru and quantum activist. " I
think something is happening worldwide as far as spiritual consciousness.
For me after almost a quarter century of mainstream and somewhat
fundamentalist Christian dogma and orthodoxy, that whole thing is giving in to a new interpretation of what
the canon says and also what is myth and what is ‘reality.’

When it comes to orthodoxy and dogma I
rather like an adage attributed to Zen Buddhism, ‘when you meet the Buddha in
the road, kill the Buddha.’"

Cavana believes in congruency. “The more you can be in sync with your
authentic self the healthier you are and the more life you bring to the things
you do, yeah congruency.” He aims
at being content in life and enjoying life. His mantra is breathe in breathe out. “Through meditating when I play my didgeridoo
I may have zeroed in on the one thing that won’t change in my world view, it
may be the constancy that anchors me, the lessons in science, those
metaphysical concepts beyond the science of plant animal relationships
surrounding oxygen are powerful. A natural outcome of this mantra is thinking
win-win, big picture, and yin yang.

Perhaps when you gravitate to something or are in accord with something it was meant to be that revelations come through it.I learned to play the didjeridoo in 30 minutes, ‘circular’ breathing and how to make sounds.Many play along time without learning ‘circular breathing’ but it just seemed like the thing to do."

Cavana is a visual and performance artists, he sings and plays
didjeridu and is aiming at attaining some level of expertise at throat singing
also know as overtone singing.

Cavana was the Poet Laureate for the City of Cleveland Heights,
Ohio from 2011-2013.

"Muhammed Ali got me into poetry with his prose and antics in the
70s," Faithwalker says. "I would write prose poetry and recite
them for fellow students in high school." He won his first poetry
contest while in high school.

Today Cavana puts himself in the activist 'box'. "A lot of folks don't like labels but we are hardwired to label and pre judge. I read this sign that said activism is the rent for living on this planet, or something like that. I like that but even more so we are all activists if we become aware and congruent. We naturally care, compassion, and get involved and wear off on those that have been beat up too much to care and get involved - empowerment. When we get too beat up someone re empowers us. Romantic view I know and I try to live into it.